Case Study: Advanced Micro Devices

"The NewsNow newsfeed has drastically reduced the need for analysts to spend
time searching the Internet for hot news articles and it has considerably
increased the speed with which breaking news gets to people who need to know
about it"

- Lise Joffrain, strategic marketing analyst, Advanced Micro Devices

Customer Need

AMD wanted a new competitive intelligence and information gathering
solution. The company wanted to be able to comb the Internet looking for
information on specific topics based on named keywords and specific
websites.

What Lise Joffrain, strategic marketing analyst, AMD, had to say

Before NewsNow, we were using two generic intranet newsfeeds, one
on semiconductors and one on computers, and we were spending a lot of time
surfing industry news sites for additional hot articles.

What made you consider the service?

We went looking for a new competitive intelligence and information gathering
solution. We wanted to be able to comb the Internet looking for information
on specific topics based on keywords we determined and websites we
selected.

How did you specify what you wanted?

The sales rep at NewsNow gave us a great demonstration of the service by
incorporating all of our initial requests into a demo newsfeed and giving us
a month to evaluate and tweak the output.

What other considerations were in play?

It was important to us that we could regularly update the keywords being
searched and the websites being indexed so that the newsfeed always returned
the most valuable items.

Were there technical considerations?

Technical considerations included a desire to have control over how often
the newsfeed email was generated and to whom it was sent through an online
interface. And having the ability to change the distribution specifications
without any need for intervention from our sales rep.

How easy was the implementation?

The implementation was simple because we had been looking at and tweaking a
fully functional demo all along. So, as soon as we made the decision to go
with NewsNow, all we had to do was sign the contract because all of the IT
work was already done on their end and the system was already in place.

Can you describe who benefits and how?

Our competitive intelligence specialists benefit most directly from the
newsfeed because it noticeably decreases the amount of time it takes to
catch up on the hottest news each morning; however, many of AMD's
microprocessor group receives information from the NewsNow newsfeed by
e-mail either once a day, once a week, or once a month.

What difference is it making to your news monitoring?

The NewsNow newsfeed has drastically reduced the need for analysts to spend
time searching the Internet for hot news articles and it has considerably
increased the speed with which breaking news gets to people who need to know
about it.

How much has it been adapted since installation?

Since installation, we have updated both the keywords and the sites being
searched, as we have worked to continuously improve the output.

Where do you see it going from here?

Going forward, we plan to continue to improve the current feed to update
keywords and add new websites to the search, and we will likely create
additional feeds for other intelligence topics.